AlwaysOn – New in SQL Server Code Name "Denali" CTP3

SQL Server AlwaysOn is the new high availability and disaster recovery solution for the next release of SQL Server. Using AlwaysOn businesses can achieve increased application availability for their mission critical applications and get higher returns on their high availability investments through better utilization of hardware resources. AlwaysOn also increases productivity and lowers TCO by greatly simplifying high availability deployment and management.

Database Availability and Instance Availability using AlwaysOn

The key aspect of AlwaysOn is that it provides you with the flexibility to configure high availability and disaster recovery for your application databases andor for the entire instance

AlwaysOn Availability Groupis the new feature in SQL Server AlwaysOn that provides availability forapplication database(s). Availability Group provides a rich set of options that gives the flexibility to configure a high availability environment that can meet the SLA’s of the various applications in your environment. The feature also comes with a set of options that allows utilization of your secondaries. Apart from these options there is complete integration with management studio and Powershell that makes deployment and management of Availability Group extremely simple.

AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instance enhances the existing SQL Server Failover Clustering feature and provides availability for the entire instance. AlwaysOn provides a richer set of capabilities that will increase instance availability and addresses a number of existing pain points.

Key Features of AlwaysOn Availability Group

Multi database failover

Multiple secondaries (A secondary is conceptually similar to a Mirror in Database Mirroring)

Max of 4 secondaries

Synchronous and asynchronous data movement

Support for 2 synchronous secondaries for additional data protection

Built in compression and encryption of transport

Automatic, Manual and Forced Failover

Flexible failover policy

Automatic Page Repair

Active Secondary

Readable secondary

Secondary backup

Automatic application redirection using virtual name

Configuration Wizard for simplified deployment

AlwaysOn Dashboard

System Center Integration

Automation using Powershell

Rich diagnostic infrastructure

DMV, Perfmon Counter, Xevents etc…

Key Features of AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instance

Native support for multi-site clustering across subnets enable DR using failover cluster instances